What Glow will do for teachers
Teachers and other education professionals are a particular focus for the services that Glow will provide, which include safe and secure access to a nationwide intranet with a large number of features:
Individual email address
Every teacher in Scotland will be given their own email address. In addition, you will be able to search for other users’ email addresses, although for security reasons local authorities will be able to decide whose details go into the address book. If you already have an external email address, this can be added to your profile and will be searchable in the address book.
There are also mailing lists which you can subscribe to so that you can automatically receive future postings.
Virtual learning environment (VLE)
From anywhere you can access the internet, you will be able to manage and control delivery of the curriculum to all the classes you teach. You will also be able to assign, assess, mark and return work to pupils, as well as checking their current performance against previous performance.
All pupils will have home pages, which will list all the work their teachers have assigned to them through Glow. When pupils complete a task, it will be returned automatically to their teacher, along with any messages. Once the teacher has reviewed the work, pupils will be able to view detailed marks and read the teacher's comments.
Chat rooms and newsgroups
Chat rooms allow you to take part in live text conversations with other users. You can form your own groups to start discussions on just about any educational topic you can imagine.
A discussion group is a conversation or dialogue about a particular subject consisting of a starter message written to a central intranet site. You can send messages to existing discussion groups, respond to previous messages, and create new discussion groups.
Security features:
- All the discussion groups and chat rooms can be moderated and filtered - to a level decided by the owner of the group or room.
- All communications can be traced back to individual users.
Instant messaging
This system allows you to see which of your contacts are online, then chat with them in real time, by typing your conversations.
Security features:
- Instant message conversations are by invitation only.
- All communications can be traced back to individual users.
Net conferencing
This service provides ‘e-meeting’ rooms for peers, as well as a virtual classroom. Net conferencing allows text, voice and video conversations between users across the intranet - from one-to-one to one-to-many. For video and voice conferencing you will need webcams and microphones.
The system offers an online whiteboard, file sharing and remote control of Glow software tools and utilities. Teachers and other users can share their presentation with others. The person controlling the meeting, typically the teacher, may then lead other users through the presentation.
Users can take snapshots from cameras and applications, and import them into the whiteboard for discussion and annotation. Users can then save copies of the whiteboard images to their local workstations for later reference.
Secure sharing of files
This is a reliable, private and secure way for transferring any kind of data or document between users or groups of users. This will be of use where guaranteed delivery between end points is important - with privacy and security built in.
Security features:
- private communication
- guaranteed delivery between end points
- complete security between two end points.